(Cambridge evening streets, 31st October, 2010)
~~~
And somehow I've been blogging for four years. Box Elder turned four yesterday (that's dating its inception from the first post anyway, I think I probably opened the blog and stared at it for a few days before that, astonished and inhibited by my own temerity, before I put anything on it), and this is its six-hundred-and-fifty-first post. I marked its first birthday but since then have been inclined to let other anniversaries slip by forgotten and unnoticed, as I almost did with this one. It doesn't seem to mind being thus neglected and taken for granted.
Although I'm not doing anything particularly remarkable here, experiencing any great creative surges, or lavishing the time and effort on blogging that I might and perhaps once did, I do feel that I am presently going through a phase of falling in love with it all over again, mostly because of the contact it has brought and still brings, and all the many and wonderful places it has led. I feel I get back seventy-times-seven, if not more, what I put into it.
I really don't care to imagine life without it now.
16 comments:
Congratulations on 4 years of blogging. I find your blog to be my favorite because of the nice mix of content you provide. The combination of pictures and words. Here's to another 4 years and more.
Cheers.
Congratulations! Glad to have your virtual company still, and judging from your last sentence, we can look forward to reading here for many years to come.
Lucy, Happy Birthday to your Box Elder. You've struck a wonderful balance here, and I'm not surprised that the site has survived four years. I'm only sorry I'm such a late-comer to this particular party!
Congratulations Lucy! I can't remember when was the first time we connect but It has always warmed my heart every time I read your words; in your blog or mine. There's so many things I love about being here too..thank you for spicing up my life with your wonderful eyesight and insight!
Happy Blogday!
I'm so glad to have your company.
Happy Birthday to the Box Elder. May it grow to be an elder with grace!
That last paragraph feels like what a happy couple might say about their long, deepening, and overall satisfying relationship.
Happy Fourth!
Congratulations on your fourth! So happy to have you in my life. And my sentiments exactly on the rewards of blogging!
I love the photos of Cambridge. Congratulations on sticking with the blog and on all the lovely and satisfying work you publish here.
And what were you doing four years ago? I can tell you. Expatiating on Spem in Alium (December 28) and wondering how Tallis managed the notation. Same post: switching to Kenneth Branagh's masterly role in Conspiracy. And then on to The Screwtape Letters. Good grief, it's as if we were existing in parallel but somehow identical universes. Too profligate, Luce, too profligate and shame on the blogosphere - you only drew one mean, miserly comment.
I scroll back and notice more on faith, churches and saints ("strongly Celtic") although you allow yourself a Lucullan aside "in danger of appearing like folk-religious garden gnomes" as if to say this stuff fascinates you but you're not yet living in the bosom of Abraham. Lots more on chuch interiors, with illustrations that suggest you've now got yourself a better camera.
Birthday thanks for, inter alia, a magnificent curry and Rossini's Messe Solenelle which may be the one Rossini work to tickle my fancy, having discarded all others. Meanwhile you've moved on to Photoshop and to fiddle organically with a nasturtium, an experience eliding mysteriously into twiddling your thumbs while waiting for the return of the "battered BX".
Mol rises out of the grass looking like a blackened, more passive version of the MGM lion.
More Tallis ("No one does Tallis like the Tallis Scholars" - no suggestion of where The Sixteen's ratings may lie). But in the midst of this, sorrow about... no I won't go there. And no comment at all to this wide-ranging (Too profligate, I say) post. But don't forget the invisibles, flitting in and out of Box Elder, eventually joining and creating The Faithful of which I am too a member.
Going backwards towards Post Number One I pass the event which induced the later sorrow. No, this isn't the time. And here we have it - the first. Why Box Elder? It was the tree you grew up under. You thought it was a rarity but France revealed a plenitude. An omen, then. Cheers.
I opened this, thinking that you were marvelling that yet another Bonfire Night had rolled round again. (I had been thinking much the same thing, as I posted pictures on Facebook . . . where, by the way, most of my "friends" are actually blog-friends. Interesting -- because as time goes by, I realise that the differentiation between "blog-friend" and "friend" is ever flimsier. There is at least as much of my "real" self there on the blog, if not more . . .)
I'm SO PLEASED that I've known you for nearly three of your blogging years! Many happy returns, to, I hope.
Congratulations on the blog anniversary. Your blog is full of things to appreciate, be joyful about and think about, so I'm glad you've been committed to it and are falling in love with it.
This calls for four bottles of my best ale ... one day in the near future, I hope that we are able to meet face-to-face and uncap them together! You found me in blogworld soon after I began posting, and I am so glad that you did, for I have dropped into Box Elder for about two years now. You've taught me so much, sweet Lucy, caused me to ooh and aah at your photography filled with wonder and your words oozing warmth and truths. Merci beaucoup! Danke vielmals! and know that I'll be knocking on your door here for a long time to come with a clinkedy basket full of liquid refreshment. Cheers!
Thank you all very much, great to see such a mix of old timers and newcomers. I'm quite surprised how long some of you have been on the scene, the last two or three years seem to have speeded up...
BB - I'm quite impressed but a little embarrassed that you have perused the archives so assiduously. No one was reading much then, as you notice, and I was really rather over-solenelle myself, without much sense of who I was writing for and why. From that point of view it seems longer than four years; keeping this blog has, I think, been instrumental in bringing about many changes, and in some ways I don't feel I am quite the same person now as then, hence the element of embarrassment.
I didn't get a better camera at that time, it was the same old Canon Powershot until a bit over a year ago. I evidently did get a bit better at using it, and discovered Picasa editing (thanks to Plutarch). Though it was a simpler thing in most ways, I still feel it had the edge over the Panasonic in others, it was quicker for bird shots, for example, though with a less powerful zoom.
I liked the Sixteen very much in that series they did with Simon Russell Beale, but don't, I think, have any recordings by them. I'm not sure they're quite as silky as the Tallis Scholars, but I am not a discerning musical person, as I must keep repeating. I don't write much about music any more because I am very aware of how inadequate my knowledge and appreciation are. I never did come to care for the Rossini, but perhaps didn't try hard enough.
I think perhaps overall, blogging has become a little less about personal expression and gut-spilling, and more about sharing things of interest in the wider world, especially photographically, and appreciating other people's talents. I hope so anyway, though I have collected so many talented and lovely other people worthy of appreciation, with more appearing all the time, that it is difficult to do them all justice, alas.
A clink and much happiness to you on the anniversary. This is a very particular space and you are generous with your words, art and ideas.
Congratulations. I've had on-again off-again times with my blog too, but I really couldn't imagine not having it. I've learned and discovered so much.
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